A Sure and Steadfast Guide
Do you crave stability, friend? I don’t mean predictability, per se, but real stability and assurance? Me too. I see you . . . trying to make sure your family’s health and well-being are secure. I see you . . . working to give your kids a solid foundation of faith. I see you . . . seeking to have reliability in your resources and finances. I’m there too, trying to find sure footing in a sea of unknowns.
When we’re confident in our circumstances, relationships, and responsibilities, we thrive and step forward with courage. But just the opposite is true as well. In the same way that crossing a river on a handful of loosely anchored rocks feels risky and unsure, we question every step when we’re not anchored securely to solid ground.
I’ve lived just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco twice, and during both seasons, I traversed this iconic suspension bridge almost weekly, marveling at its magnificent beauty and impressive engineering. Every day, more than 110,000 vehicles cross the bridge without their drivers questioning the stability of its 8,981-foot span from end to end across the waters of the San Francisco Bay. Bridges like the Golden Gate are anchored deeply into the bedrock below the water (for the Golden Gate, that’s 65 feet and more underground); they must be if they are to withstand high winds, raging storms, and crashing waves. For any structure to be truly stable, it must be anchored to solid ground.
This is why it matters, on life’s journey, that we not simply grasp at temporary buoys. It’s not enough to just hold on to something; we need to pay attention to the permanence of what, or Who, we cling to.
If there is one attribute of God that is difficult to comprehend, it is that God never changes. How do we wrap our minds around an idea so beyond our everyday reality and understanding? Everything about human existence involves change. We grow; God doesn’t. We have faults; he is sinless. We improve; he doesn’t. We are fickle; he remains the same.
We seek change—with homes, jobs, friends, communities, leaders, diets, churches, locations, identities, and more—because we are longing for our ideal. We desire something better, truer, more stable—a sense of perfection. We want to sink our lives into something that won’t leave us disappointed. So we keep running, keep searching, keep trying to fix, improve, and reinvent. In a world that is constantly changing its mind and declaring no absolutes, we find ourselves longing to anchor our lives to something—or someone—real.
So when God reveals himself as the Beginning and the End—the One who cannot and will not change, fade, evolve, or go back on his word—we hesitate and wonder: Can I really trust him?
God is permanent and immovable:
Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands,
They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
but you are the same, and your years have no end.
Psalm 102:25-27
The psalmist recognized that God, as the author and creator of all things, is permanent, unchanging, and is not searching for better, like we are. He is the ideal. He is truth. He is perfection. He is the real anchor we can rely on. Because God exists as the unchanging center of all creation, we needn’t endlessly search for a better way when we journey with our strong, changeless, immutable God.
God’s purposes are unchanging:
Remember this and stand firm,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, “My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose.”
Isaiah 46:8-10
God’s promises are fulfilled:
“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Numbers 23:19).
God does not take back his gifts:
“The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). Do you see it? God is not capricious. He is not susceptible to mood swings and does not get flustered. His immutability means that we can trust who he is, what he has done, and what he promises to do.
Some of us have journeyed far too long believing that we alone must be the rock of stability and reliability—for ourselves and for everyone else. How exhausting it is when we attempt to be the source of permanence and perfection that we were never meant to be.
Others of us have chased paths we hope will lead us to greater security and happiness, only to find that nothing on earth can still our wandering minds . . . no one can settle our restless hearts.
But God.
Only a holy, unchanging, immutable God is worthy of these old and familiar lines from The Solid Rock: “When darkness seems to hide his face, I rest on his unchanging grace; In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand; all other ground is sinking sand.”
As Hebrews 6:19-20 says, “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”
Simply put, as Christ-followers, Jesus is now our only way to access the holy God of the universe. We are anchored to a sure and steady Father because of the redeeming grace of God—not because of any good we have done. Through Jesus, we are anchored to a sure and unchanging Father, even as we ourselves are fickle and faithless.
So, let us hold fast to our unchanging, immutable God. He is immovable, unshakeable, undeterred. He cannot lie, and he does not go back on his word. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). When we rest in him, we put our trust in the surest and steadiest of anchors.
Excerpted from: Pilgrim. Copyright © 2023 Ruth Chou Simons (art and text). Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97408. www.harvesthousepublishers.com
